Selected works (1982-2005)
Viktor Kochetov and his son Sergiy really wanted to get away from the fake imagery of presumably happy Soviet life that dominated official reportages. Instead, Viktor and Sergiy shifted their attention to the scenes of unadorned, unstaged Soviet reality. The artists became known for the extensive use of hand-colouring, which is rooted in the tradition of ‘luriki’— a colloquial name for enlarged, retouched and often tinted family portraits. Boris Mikhailov was the first among the Kharkiv photographers who turned this widespread practice of hand-coloured portraiture into an artistic gesture.
The Kochetovs elaborated on Mikhailov’s idea, varying the intensity of colouring and formats of the prints. They took a large number of their images with the panoramic ‘Horizon’ camera, used most often for landscape photography. The vibrant colours of Kochetovs’ works do not veil but amplify the greyness of reality, revealing the lyrical side of mundane things at the same time.
